Skip to main content

Listening to you speak could help reveal stress, depression, and even heart conditions

machine learning health insights voice
Can the same technology which analyzes emotion in voices also be used to identify health-related issues, ranging from stress and depression to heart conditions? That’s the question being asked as part of a collaboration between voice-driven emotions analytics company Beyond Verbal and researchers at leading global medical institutions, including the Mayo Clinic.

Their answer? An optimistic ‘yes.’

Related Videos

Over the past 21 years, Beyond Verbal has gathered an impressive broad dataset of 2.5 million emotion-tagged voices in upwards of 40 different languages. The idea is that, working with its medical partners, it can use the power of machine learning and big data to also examine the connection between vocal intonations and health issues.

“We are not calling what we’re doing right now diagnostics,” Yuval Mor, CEO of Beyond Verbal, told Digital Trends. “Instead, it’s about long-term monitoring and decision support systems. The diagnostic tools that a doctor can use right now can do a better job than we can with vocal markers. However, what we’re doing is to use voice abnormalities observed over time to say that your voice is significantly different from how it sounded yesterday, a week ago, or two months ago — and then to correlate those changes with specific things we can identify.”

The ability to recognize certain conditions based on voice is not new, and nor does it always require a machine. Listening to a person speak can be used to help reveal that they may be suffering from certain conditions, such as dementia or Parkinson’s disease. However, machine learning tools can be used to go further — by dialing in on granular details which may not be readily observable to the human ear.

In particular, what Beyond Verbal is hoping to do is expand this recognition to medical and physiological conditions which are not associated with the brain.

“That’s where this work is becoming very fascinating, and that’s what we’ve been working with the Mayo Clinic over the past two years to do,” Mor said. This may include the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, for example, which Mor said is something that is being looked at very closely.

Right now, the so-called Beyond Health Research Platform is still rolling out, but Mor noted that collaborators are certainly thinking big with the project.

“The long-term vision is that everyone will have their own companion, a guardian angel, which could be anything from your mobile phone to your Amazon Echo,” he said. “It might be that it monitors your phone conversations, or that you speak to an app for 30 seconds every morning — and from that it gives you high-level indications. You either get a green light saying everything is okay, a yellow light saying it’s worth monitoring closely, or a red light telling you that something is significantly different and it can be mapped to a specific condition, so you should go see your doctor.”

Coming soon to a device near you? We certainly hope so. In the meantime, this is a fascinating piece of research we’ll be sure to keep our eyes on.

Editors' Recommendations

COVID-19 lockdown in China may slow Mac Studio shipments
Apple's Mac Studio desktop.

Anyone ordering Apple’s recently unveiled Mac Studio desktop should carefully be eyeing the shipping date as a COVID-19-related lockdown in the Chinese city of Shenzhen threatens to leave customers waiting longer than originally expected to receive their new machines.

Announced on Sunday, March 13, the lockdown in one of the world's busiest tech hubs will force the city's suppliers and manufacturing facilities to close for at least a week. Apple supplier Foxconn has already announced the temporary closure of several Shenzhen manufacturing sites, one of which produces iPhones.

Read more
Sleep Number’s New 360 Smart Bed monitors and improves sleep health as you age
The Sleep Number New 360 Smart Bed set up in a bedroom

Today at CES 2022, Sleep Number, a leader in sleep health and research, has unveiled the latest entry in its smart bed lineup, the new 360 Smart Bed. With the assistance of A.I. and machine learning, this new smart bed has unique features that will help it monitor and improve your sleep health as you age.

Sleep is a significant part of our lives and vital to our general health. Knowing that, Sleep Number created it smart bed years ago to help track sleeping patterns. This new iteration of the smart bed has even more features to track sleep patterns, as well as predict issues and react when they arise.

Read more
French startup Circular unveils promising Oura fitness-tracking competitor
Movano Ring. Credits: Movano official.

Several smartwear products took the center stage at CES 2022. Apart from the heavy hitters such as Garmin and Skagen, a Movano ring was also unveiled, with a design that specifically has female users in mind. Finally, a French company called Circular also unveiled its first product, simply called the Circular Ring. The Circular Ring has changeable outer shells for user customization. The ring is extremely lightweight at only 4 grams. It is also water-resistant up to 5 meters. It also offers up to 22 days of built-in data storage without a Bluetooth connection. The biocompatible resin-based product will be available in different sizes.
The circular ring could give stiff competition to the Movano ring in the coming years. Movano official.
Tracking and features
A 14-day calibration period begins as soon as the user wears the ring for the first time. During this period, the ring establishes the user's baseline health parameters, which helps it to give them personalized and actionable recommendations to make healthy changes in their lives. Circular tracks multiple health metrics, including temperature, heart rate variability, energy levels, and VO2 Max. Circular has a dual PPG sensor in its ring combined with the Circular app that allows it to read heart signals and blood oxygen. It detects if the heart rate shows any signs of cardiac arrhythmia, and if the heart rhythm is steady. The data tracked is purported to be clinically accurate and can be shared with a professional for further advice. Wearing it both during the day and the night can help Circular to correlate the data using machine learning.Circular also seems to be extremely efficient while tracking sleep. It can tell a user how much time they spend in each sleep stage -- light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and when they are lying awake. More importantly, it also calculates how efficiently a user has slept. The app shares data on a number of important criteria to examine sleep quality, including time taken to fall asleep, sleep debt, real sleep time, disturbances while sleeping, etc. It also provides silent vibrations to users in their light sleep stage if they wish to be awakened, without disturbing their surroundings.
Price and availability 
A single charge of the ring gives it four days of battery life. A single charge from 0% to 100% can be completed in one hour. Pre-orders, which will begin soon, will run until February 27, 202. The device will have a cost of 259 euros ($293) during that time. Starting February 28, the price will jump to 289 euros ($327). Shipping and other details are expected to be announced soon by the company.

Read more